Direct Provision is an ‘inhumane and cruel system’

LETTER?A letter demanding an end to direct provision for asylum seekers is handed to An Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s Parliamentary Secretary Ger Deere at the Taoiseach’s Castlebar office last week.?Pic: Michael Donnelly

Direct Provision is an ‘inhumane and cruel system’ – Cllr Ruane


Taoiseach must act now

Áine Ryan

DIRECT Provision forces men, women and children to live in an ‘inhumane and cruel system’, for up to a decade in some cases, and it must end now. That is the view of longtime campaigner, Sinn Féin Cllr Thérèse Ruane who joined protestors when they delivered a letter to Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s constituency offices, in Castlebar last week.
 “For ten years, I have visited Direct Provision centres here in Mayo and other parts of the country, listening to horrific stories of residents. I personally wouldn’t last a day there and yet I know people who have been there for ten years. Their children have been born into these places. It’s inhumane, unjust and cruel,” Cllr Ruane said yesterday.
Arguing that children comprised one-third of the numbers – ‘vulnerable people’ – living in hostels for asylum-seekers, such as The Old Convent in Ballyhaunis, she said she had ‘consistently highlighted just how inappropriate this system is for vulnerable people’.
Ms Ruane, who is a founder member of Mayo Intercultural Action (MIA), asked: “Have we not learnt anything from our abysmal record of how we have treated vulnerable men, women and children in Magdalene laundries, Industrial schools, mother and baby homes in the past? Will Direct Provision be the next Ryan Report? Yet again, the State is abdicating responsibility for the care of vulnerable people and children in Direct Provision hostels.”
She observed that as the group delivered the letter to An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny last Wednesday, she ‘couldn’t help thinking that a future Taoiseach will have to stand up in the DΡil and make an apology of behalf of the State to the men, women and children who endured Direct Provision for the abysmal way the State have treated them’.
Ms Ruane said that theTaoiseach and the Minister for Justice, Frances Fitzgerald ‘have the power to stop this inhumane treatment of vulnerable men, women and children and to ensure they get the care, protection and dignity they deserve’.
“Ten years is too long. It’s time for action,” she added.
Meanwhile, the Coordinator of MIA, Patricia Luby, told The Mayo News last night that ‘children living in Direct Provision hostels are being denied their constitutional rights’.
“Some of these children, who have in fact been born in the State, are not viewed in terms of their equal rights as Irish citizens because their parents are seeking asylum. The voices of these children are not being heard despite the fact that we have a Minister for Children and so much policy regarding their rights,” Ms Luby said.